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Combining hives with supers on?

  • 22 May 2022 3:33 PM
    Reply # 12789910 on 12789234
    Anonymous member (Administrator)

    You could add a frame with fresh eggs on it instead, but you will still have to juggle the boxes. Equalize the two hives giving the queenless hive a frame with eggs. However that puts you 50 days out for new bees....

    I think one of the youtubers addressed this recently. Fred Dunn or Duck River.

    For this combine I think I would do a newspaper trick and put the small one on top of the Queenless, leaving the supers in place. Rotate the boxes shortly after they have merged? (It is said the queen will not cross honey.) You would want to think about drones too if you are using an excluder (I think no excluder would be better temporarily).

  • 21 May 2022 1:51 PM
    Message # 12789234

    My giant hive that I’ve made several splits from is queenless. No brood, no eggs, but it has tons of bees and nearly two supers full of honey. They were left with two queen cells but should have had a queen going by now.
    I want to recombine a split I made from it. Normally I would just put some. Newspaper on and put the new box on it. But this hive has the two honey supers on it. How can I combine them while keeping the supers on? Should I use a bee escape to remove most bees from the supers before adding them above the new brood box, which will go above the two original brood boxes?? Put newspaper below and above the new brood box and put it in same position as mentioned above? Supers have a Vivaldi box on top with small open.

    Last modified: 22 May 2022 9:45 AM | Anonymous member
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